Munich: Spielbergs failure
Published on Page A13 of the July 21, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
IMAGINE if, after the Abu Sayyaf invaded a diving resort in Malaysia and kidnapped a number of tourists and Malaysian resort employees, the Malaysian government decided to retaliate by bombing Metro Manila and killing hundreds of civilians.
This, in essence, is what the Israeli government has done in the wake of the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers at the Israel-Lebanon border. Though Hezbollah, a guerrilla group, has accepted responsibility for the kidnapping, saying they had carried it out to bargain for the release of Palestinians and Lebanese in Israeli jails, Israel decided to retaliate
against all Lebanese, destabilizing the fragile peace in the country and the central government. Bombs have landed not just on suspected Hezbollah lairs but even in the capital Beirut, killing 300 Lebanese civilians -- one-third of them children.
Lebanon, said a BBC reporter, is being "torn to shreds," with the humanitarian situation, according to the UN, "worsening by the hour."
Israeli authorities are unapologetic about the scale and targets of their retaliation. A spokesman even justified the bombing of civilian infrastructure in Lebanon as his government's attempt to hobble the Hezbollah's ability to move across the country. This struck me as odd, since the guerrillas are mostly concentrated in southern Lebanon anyway, and the bombing of Beirut is largely pointless, except perhaps to score propaganda points.
* * *
THE RAPID and disproportional escalation of the conflict brought to mind the movie "Munich," released last year and produced and directed by Steven Spielberg, which sent a strong message precisely on the Israeli policy of "swift and full retribution" for every attack and provocation. In many ways, as its Arab neighbors have been saying, Israel has been a destabilizing presence in the Middle East, but its policy of wreaking vengeance for every incident it deems a threat to its security scales up the possibilities for conflict and a never-ending cycle of retribution.
"Munich" is based on the memoirs of an Israeli agent who was assigned in 1972 to go after the people believed to be behind the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes and officials participating in the Munich Olympics. With his team, "Avner" crisscrosses Europe hunting down the men named in a list provided by Israeli intelligence. But as the assassinations proceed, Avner begins to doubt not just the linkages between the men on the list and the terrorists, but also the wisdom of the policy behind his assignment. As
they go after the PLO leaders and their allies, Israel's enemies scale up their own responses, embarking on plane hijackings, airport bombings and their own assassinations. A tooth for a tooth, indeed.
Avner gradually realizes that he and his team have turned into the very same people they were assigned to hunt down. And as he attempts to leave the secret service and join his family in civilian life, Avner finds that not even his own government will grant him leave to live in peace.
"There is no peace at the end of this," someone says toward the movie's end. It might well be a comment on the current conflict between Israel and Lebanon.
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FOR Filipinos, interest in the "Middle East situation" centers mainly on the fate of the thousands of overseas workers trapped in Lebanon, many of them domestic workers abandoned by their employers.
Other governments have marshaled buses, planes and ships to move their nationals out of Lebanon and to staging areas where they could finally be sent home. The Philippine government, however, for lack of funds, has resorted to sending out a flurry of letters to different governments begging them to give Filipinos free rides on transports out of Lebanon.
The "lack of funds" excuse is puzzling, since the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) boasts of billions in contingency funds drawn fromthe wages of overseas workers themselves. Why can't this money be used to airlift or move out the Filipinos in Lebanon? And why can't the national government release funds from the national treasury, if need be, to protect Filipino lives?
The government's actions so far-calling on Filipinos to gather at a Catholic parish in Beirut and dispatching Ambassador Roy Cimatu to organize the evacuation effort-seem puny and embarrassing compared to how other governments have scrambled to get their people out of harm's way. Indeed, it seems that in the wake of a major international crisis, the best our officials can do is wring their hands and appeal for help from other countries.
* * *
EVEN more pathetic is the foreign policy declaration made by Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita in the face of the hostilities in Lebanon. "I don't think we should ever be involved," Ermita is quoted as saying. But like it or not, we are involved precisely because Filipinos find themselves caught in it.
Given the number of Filipinos working abroad, and the reach of their diaspora to practically every corner of the world, we need to forge a foreign policy that would, first of all, promote the national interest, and second, protect Filipino lives wherever conflict or tension arises.
We cannot just say "we're not getting involved" when so many Filipino lives are at risk. And we cannot keep scrambling for stopgap solutions every time violence erupts. Given the number of years we've been exporting workers, and the billions these workers have been sending home, we owe it to them to have contingency plans in place, with resources at the ready and deployed with every crisis.
Multiplexes at 30,000 feet
| Updated 7/21/2006 11:31 AM ET | E-mail | Save | Print | Reprints & Permissions | Subscribe to stories like this  |
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Improved entertainment technology, longer flights and rising competition for passengers have some airlines now booking as many as 360 movie titles a year, roughly triple what they would have a decade ago.
New, sophisticated on-board entertainment systems, available mostly on international routes, can hold hundreds of hours of movies and let passengers choose which movie to watch in the relative privacy of their own seats. Airlines are using the breakthrough to lure more passengers, particularly long-haul business travelers willing to pay top fares.
That has forced carriers to rethink their penchant for buying only bland, light-hearted movies with mass appeal like Cheaper by the Dozen 2 or Failure to Launch. Today, they're buying adult fare that would have had no chance a few years ago — films like Brokeback Mountain, Transamerica and Sideways.
But that's not all, says Jeff Klein, president of Jaguar Distribution, which supplies films edited for in-flight viewing. Airlines' increased appetite for movies also has them buying children's favorites, classic films, quirky shorts, critically acclaimed titles and even hot-button political documentaries.
Many carriers are seeking "more cerebral films" that "would hardly have seen the light of day" in years past, Klein says. Jaguar recently booked Thank You for Smoking, a satirical film about a tobacco industry lobbyist, on the in-seat video systems on most U.S. carriers.
Last year, Motorcycle Diaries, an independent film about a formative road trip of Argentine-born Marxist Che Guevara, received more bookings than he'd expected, he says.
"Since the in-seat video system came in, their selections have changed," Klein says.
The biggest movie consumer: Singapore Airlines, which offers about 80 titles at a time, including about 30 fresh titles a month. Now showing: cop drama 16 Blocks and animated adventure Ice Age: The Meltdown.
Northwest Airlines, the biggest movie buyer among U.S. airlines, now needs 40 titles at any one time to meet its entertainment needs, including at least 10 new titles per month.
'Snakes on a Plane' is out
But not everything is changing as airlines cast their nets broadly for more diverse in-flight fare. The action thriller Snakes on a Plane, which opens in theaters in August, will probably never show on a single flight. The movie takes place on a mythical Pacific Air jetliner 30,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean, according to the movie's promotional website. On the flight, an assassin hired to kill a Mob turncoat frees a crate full of poisonous snakes.
The plot violates rule No. 1 for most every airline worldwide: To avoid scaring passengers, never show an airline disaster flick. Ditto for film portrayal of the struggle on one of the hijacked planes on Sept. 11, United 93, and for Oliver Stone's forthcoming World Trade Center.
In-flight entertainment is mostly a free perk in business and first class. Foreign carriers generally are far ahead of the financially struggling U.S. airlines in providing it.
The airlines that offer a big variety of films for the most part aren't making money on them in the short term, even the airlines that charge passengers. The best entertainment systems can cost upwards of $15,000 per seat, Peter Miller of Skytrax, a London-based aviation research firm.
Plus, he says, the lost revenue from diverting a plane from service can reach $100,000 a day, while the cost of cabin modifications can exceed $1 million, he says.
But airlines believe that by giving customers a broader selection, they will be rewarded with greater loyalty from those customers.
"For the long-haul international traveler, probably the two leading drivers of consumer choice (are) seat comfort and in-flight entertainment," says Nancy Darwitz, Northwest's director of onboard communications.
And, says Joanne Smith, Delta's in-flight entertainment chief, airlines that offer edgier movies can distinguish themselves. It "gives customers an opportunity to say, 'Delta's different; I'll choose Delta.' "
Delta is installing new digital entertainment systems in premium cabins in all of its 75 international planes by the end of next year, and in every cabin in a fourth of its domestic planes by the end of 2008. The systems will let customers choose from 20 movies and other content.
Frequent flier William Olmstead of Omaha says he flew last month from Montreal to Chicago on Air Canada, which is in the midst of installing new digital systems with seatback screens throughout all of its planes.
He says he was "blown away by the literally dozens of free TV and movie selections available on the excellent head rest screen at my seat." Air Canada offers customers a choice of 16 movies.
But the changes aren't coming soon enough for frequent domestic flier Michael Buesing, a software consultant in Scottsdale. Ariz. On U.S. flights, he still mostly sees "feel-good movies," so now he's rebelling.
"I finally broke down and bought a portable DVD player, so I no longer watch any in-flight programming," he says. "I'm also a Netflix subscriber, so my options have increased."
Though still upgrading equipment, Delta has already shifted its cinematic vision to reflect the hipper image it wants to project.
"There was a time in our past when we just showed movies about dogs. It's somewhat comical, but we felt those were safe movies," Smith says.
Now Delta's comfortable showing an unedited version of Brokeback Mountain on in-seat systems on long flights.
Delta also showed a family-friendly version of Sideways, Alexander Payne's adult-themed flick about two guys on a road trip to wine country, as a main cabin movie. But first, nudity and objectionable language were edited out, and boxer shorts were painted on a naked man running down a street.
Pushing the political envelope
Movie trend-setter Virgin Atlantic, which offers 60 films per flight, continues to push boundaries, sending representatives to London film schools and film festivals like Sundance to search out new content.
Virgin, the British carrier, is big on showing theatrically released documentaries, like Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, a critical look at President Bush's rationale for going to war with Iraq.
While U.S. carriers spurned that film, considering it too controversial, Virgin movie chief Lysette Gauna says it was one of the airline's biggest hits. It was such a hit that she's already requested this summer's political blockbuster documentary: Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, about the effects of global warming.
Northwest, which still prides itself on its family-friendly film picks like Tim Allen's The Shaggy Dog, now searches for independent films that fit the category. This month, Northwest is showing The Story of An African Farm, an independent English film about two little orphan girls who are going to Africa to live with their aunt. Darwitz calls it "a very sweet, touching family story."
Despite changing standards, picking the right movies is challenging because of the wide variety of passengers, says Mary McKee, American's managing director of in-flight products.
"We have the steady business traveler. The mother and father traveling with child," she says. "There's no one movie that fits all."
Airlines also realize that their cabins are growing more diverse than ever before as air travel surges in developing nations. That requires greater movie diversity.
Singapore, for instance, has provided movies in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Hindi and Tamil, but recently added films in Arabic. American Airlines added Bollywood films to its in-seat movie selection when it launched non-stop service to India last summer.
Great expectations
Fliers have different expectations than they did 30 years ago when the first overhead screens came out. Then, airlines could wow passengers simply by playing a recent theatrical release on the overhead system.
Flight attendants would sell headsets, insert a tape into the player, and show it to everyone in the cabin. This arrangement — still the dominant way domestic U.S. fliers see movies in coach class — minimized the need for diverse selections and forced airlines to err on the conservative side to avoid offending a general audience.
In-flight entertainment evolved in the late 1980s, allowing for seat-side viewing and more channels. During the travel boom in the late 1990s, airlines around the world, including U.S. carriers, began buying newer analog in-seat systems for premium cabins on long-range jets. They installed seatback video screens around 6 inches to 10 inches.
Manufacturers have now begun phasing out analog systems and replacing them with digital systems.
Sound is better, and screens are bigger. Emirates airline offers personal TV screens larger than 20 inches.
"The move to digital opened up a whole new generation of opportunity for airlines," says David Bruner of equipment maker Panasonic.
While the trend is toward more airlines buying a broader array of movies, Klein, the distributor, says it's also true that airlines have developed some new sensitivities since 9/11. After those attacks, even Virgin Atlantic, perhaps the edgiest of the airlines, censored movies for references that could be considered offensive on grounds of religion, politics or violence.
Other airlines edited out of movies images of the World Trade Center. He believes that Munich, Steven Spielberg's 2005 film about the Israeli response to the massacre of its athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics, would have played on more flights in a pre-9/11 world.
"They'd never play anything with a skyjacking," he says. "But before 9/11, they would've been less sensitive about booking something with an act of terrorism on the ground."
Airlines also shy away from movies that might be considered downbeat, he says. Several turned down Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby, despite its outstanding results at theaters in 2004.
For Hollywood, airlines' growing demand can be a windfall. The studios negotiate a licensing fee from the airline, based on the number of people thought to watch a film. If a movie shows across the fleet on American, it could show 15,000 times in a month.
"It's a nice little extra business. It's found money," says Linda Palmer, who oversees non-theatrical distribution for Buena Vista Studios, a division of Disney.
Posted 7/20/2006 10:24 PM ETYou might have hoped for a mini-Entebbe in Lebanon, a daring raid to free the hostages. But Mossad seems to have lost them (as well as the plot).
We know what went wrong in the weeks before 9/11. The CIA and a bewildering array of other intelligence organisations messed up: no co-ordination, no good information, no action. We know what went wrong, immediately, in Iraq: no weapons of mass destruction, no reason for war. We know that the return of the Taliban wasn't anticipated, that the Russell Square tube bombers slipped through the net, that the copper watching De Menezes went for a pee at a fatal moment. We know, in short, that there's a hell of a lot we don't know - because we're so short of good intelligence. But now that's the lesson of Beirut, too.
Where, so many weeks of bloodshed in Gaza later, is the Israeli soldier that Hamas took hostage? Where, in southern Lebanon, are the two Israelis snatched by Hezbollah? Israeli legend from Entebbe to the Munich Olympics (as recreated by Stephen Spielberg) makes Mossad a wonder of efficiency, daring and reliability, a model for and a reproach to other intelligence services. Nobody, supposedly, does it better ... Nobody can be of more use to Washington and London than its covert friends in the heart of the region.
Time for a reality check. The hostages haven't been found - and rescued - in some daring raid. Hezbollah's rocket sites haven't been all destroyed by pinpoint strikes. Hezbollah's command and control, despite claims to the contrary, appears alive and functioning, whilst TV cameras in Beirut bring us daily evidence of dead children, just caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Are western intelligence services proving much help here? Obviously not: the CIA and MI6 don't know where the hostages are, quite obviously. They haven't got the men on the ground in Lebanon or Gaza to find out. They'd hope that Mossad would be doing better. But it isn't. It's weak on the ground, too. Its failure means that the Israeli army has to go marching into south Lebanon again (and blundering into Hezbollah ambushes). Its first and most palpable failure in Gaza, its own backyard, has seen events spiral out of control. One hostage, still missing: one way of unravelling crisis, still lost.
And that, alas, brings us back to Iraq, and Iran. Saddam was supposedly a mortal enemy. He launched Scuds into Israel itself. But Israel's intelligence didn't know when those Scuds were junked - and Tehran, in turn, seems a mystery wrapped in hysteria. What's going on, apart from far too much killing and far too much fear? Who knows? Those we pay millions to tell us seem to have lost the plot. Put intelligence to practical test again and you come up with a shrug of despair.
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